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Regarding your edit, Ubuntu *is* proprietary software. You are right with the OSS in the repos, but most core-utilities are heavily patched with proprietary additions, so the user does not really have much/any insight into it.

Fitting your description, all that comes to my mind is graphics and network cards drivers and things like Jockey. Is that what you mean or am I completely oblivious to a shadier fašade of Ubuntu? Do you recall any examples of what you meant?

I see this kind of criticism a lot on the internet, aimed at Canonical, and I don't think it's fair. Yes, Canonical is for-profit, but they have done a tremendous service for Linux by allowing the userbase to be expanded. Thanks to easier to use distros like Ubuntu, Linux is now more widespread and we users have been gaining more attention. See Steam, for example, which also brings us more attention. Graphics drivers - both open and closed - are getting much better. Even Microsoft is releasing software for Linux now (Skype). Without the surge os popularity Linux has been enjoying - and that Canonical either brought or at least played a huge part in -, we'd be much worse off. Ask the BSD guys aout the kind of problems they have been facing lately.

So, yes, Canonical will probably make quite a few bucks with adverts, but the beautiful thing is that nothing is stopping anyone of creading a CentOS for their RHEL. And removing the bits they don't like, adding new stuff, whatever. Look at Mint. That's what the GPL is about. No one can own that code and monopolize anything, ever. There's no lock-in possible unless they start implementing closed-source software on top of Debian and calling that Ubuntu. But they haven't so far. Unity is available on other distributions now. As shitty as Unity is, I think it's great that it's an option.

Regarding the phone, we'll have to see. Regardless of its quality or the technology used, it seems to be at least as open as Android, which is also a positive and makes everything I said about their desktop distribution apply (look at Cyanogenmod for a particularly good example).

Having said all that, I'm not a fan of Ubuntu at all, vastly preferring either Mint of proper Debian. But I can't gloss over the advantages they brought us all and I certainly don't see them as a threat to free software.

I have not seen any good stat that support this case. Most stat I have seen show Linux have more ore less the same market share as ten years ago. If you count Android this i obviously not the case but that has nothing todo with Canonical.
I'm sure they do a lot for there user but unlike Red hat this don't affect user of other distribution much.

1. Larabel posts a link-bait "article" distorting and hijacking a reasonable post by a guy, Aaron Seigo, who has been doing huge work in the open source world for over a decade.
2. Larabel refuses to correct his "article" after the source calls him out on it.
3. Adblock on or off for Phoronix? THANKS FOR MAKING THE DECISION EASY LARABEL!

Originally Posted by liamdawe

Hah Michael got burned!

It really is just to spur up flames and get himself more hits *sigh*

You all actually expect better from the guy that is the worst reporter in tech news?

I have not seen any good stat that support this case. Most stat I have seen show Linux have more ore less the same market share as ten years ago. If you count Android this i obviously not the case but that has nothing todo with Canonical.
I'm sure they do a lot for there user but unlike Red hat this don't affect user of other distribution much.

Well, duh. The mass adoption of any GNU derived Linux distro is wholly based on it being default. If computers in Best Buy were selling with Ubuntu, and cheaper than the same hardware running Windows, in 5 years it would have 50% market share.

99% of consumers don't know what an OS is, and will never actively replace what comes on their hardware. Beyond compatibility, program support, etc, default comes first. From default comes all the rest through momentum.

I have not seen any good stat that support this case. Most stat I have seen show Linux have more ore less the same market share as ten years ago. If you count Android this i obviously not the case but that has nothing todo with Canonical.
I'm sure they do a lot for there user but unlike Red hat this don't affect user of other distribution much.

If it wasn't for Canonical I wouldn't be using Arch Linux today, because they introduced me to Linux with Ubuntu 10.10.

If it wasn't for Canonical I wouldn't be using Arch Linux today, because they introduced me to Linux with Ubuntu 10.10.

How do you now that? It existed a bunch of newbe distributions before Ubuntu. If you began with linux after Ubuntu become popular it's very likely you tried Ubuntu first. Some years earlier people had recommended some other distro.

How do you now that? It existed a bunch of newbe distributions before Ubuntu. If you began with linux after Ubuntu become popular it's very likely you tried Ubuntu first. Some years earlier people had recommended some other distro.

I started out on Mandrake linux, which was one of the newbie recommended distros at the time. I do think Ubuntu did a decent marketing job and got some name recognition around linux that hadn't existed before, but for someone wanting to try out linux they were nothing special compared to what was there before.

How do you now that? It existed a bunch of newbe distributions before Ubuntu. If you began with linux after Ubuntu become popular it's very likely you tried Ubuntu first. Some years earlier people had recommended some other distro.

I've got something similar in that Ubuntu is why I run Linux as my main OS. Sure for years I dabbled with Lindows/Linspire and Mandrake/Mandriva and even tried Yellow Dog, Debian and SuSE but kept going back to OS X and Windows as my OSs even though I tried to use as much open source software as possible.

It wasn't till Ubuntu got things right that I ditched Windows outright and started depreciating my OS X installs for Linux. Had Ubuntu 5.04 not gotten things so right I would still likely not be using Linux as my primary OS on all machines in the house.

Well, duh. The mass adoption of any GNU derived Linux distro is wholly based on it being default. If computers in Best Buy were selling with Ubuntu, and cheaper than the same hardware running Windows, in 5 years it would have 50% market share.

99% of consumers don't know what an OS is, and will never actively replace what comes on their hardware. Beyond compatibility, program support, etc, default comes first. From default comes all the rest through momentum.